“Penis Man” Graffiti Confounds Phoenix
In the early months of 2020, before coronavirus arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, there was a much less serious but surpisingly elusive phenomenon spreading through the greater Phoenix area: “Penis Man” graffiti.
In the months of January and February, a graffiti artist began tagging locations with the words “Penis Man” simply scrawled in spray paint. The phrase appeared on signs, on the sides of buildings, on crosswalks, and on portable toilets, seemingly at random. Local reactions ranged from bemused and annoyed at most and to amused by the antics at least. Police tried for weeks to catch the perpetrator, but the nature of the crime meant that tagging different locations didn’t take very long, so it was more difficult to catch him or her in the act. Photos of the various “Penis Man” tags appeared on social media as the graffiti artist continued to make his way around town.
Many images of the “Penis Man” tag began appearing on social media. What if, as investigative reporters, we wanted to locate all of the sites that the graffiti artist tagged based solely on the photographs?
Thanks to OSINT - or open source intelligence - methods, we can.
OSINT methods for investigating a photograph can be broken down into four key factors that must be identified: where, when, how, and who. Let’s take a look at one photo of the Penis Man tag, and together, we can determine the first of those four factors: where the picture was taken.
To do this, we will use a photograph of one of the larger “Penis Man” tags to appear around town:
Penis Man graffiti located somewhere in the greater Phoenix area.
This photo appeared on Twitter in this social media post about the graffiti: 
Where was this photo taken?
The first step in conducting an open source investigation into a photograph is to figure out where the photograph was taken. This is done through a technique called geolocation.
When doing an open source investigation, it is often easier to rule out potential locations rather than ruling them in. So, let’s start narrowing our search.
We know that whoever is writing “Penis Man” on public property is doing so in the greater Phoenix area. This knowledge allows us to narrow down our search to Phoenix and the surrounding cities.
Next, we want to carefully scan the photo for identifiable geographic features that can be used to narrow down the possible locations the photo was taken. These features can be anything unique and potentially identifiable, such as roads, buildings, street signs, parks, water, or other recognizable landmarks. Details are important, so keep a sharp eye out for small clues that may be useful.
For example, in our photo, we can see grass in the foreground and in the back right corner. Above the portable toilets, a small hill with shrubs is just visible. To the right of the portable toilets there appears to be water. Towards the top, there are multiple powerlines visible.
Some features will provide bigger hints than others. Which features those are may depend on the location.
What other landmarks can you spot in the photo?
Luckily for us, there are not many places in the Phoenix area that have both water and grass. Locating these areas will help us narrow down our options considerably. Using Google Maps, we can eliminate many of the places in Phoenix that do not appear green on the map (assuming that green corresponds to places where grass is growing).
A screenshot of Phoenix on Google Maps reveals the greenest spots in the city, circled in red.
Unfortunately, though this did help us exclude significant parts of Phoenix, Glendale, and Tempe, it still leaves a significant portion of the city to explore. Let’s see if we can narrow our options down even further – where are there significant bodies of water in the Phoenix area?
Circled in blue are the major bodies of water in the Phoenix area.
The areas with significant amounts of grass and water that overlap are in Scottsdale and around Tempe Town Lake.
By far the largest body of water in the Phoenix area is Tempe Town Lake. Let’s continue our search there for now, since it meets two of our criteria.
Now, that we’re focusing on Tempe Town Lake as our main body of water, what other features and landmarks can we use to narrow our search?
We know that our picture has grass in the foreground and the background. Tempe Town Lake is not entirely encircled in grass, so this helps us narrow our search to just certain parts of the lake.
Circled in green, the largest parks and patches of grass surrounding Tempe Town Lake are visible.
From this vantage point, we can try to identify some of the other landmarks in the photo. Visible in the picture is a small, shrubby knoll and the silver back of a street sign, like one that would appear on a highway.
Red arrows point to likely landmarks from the photograph, such as a shrubby hill and a highway.
Based on our determinations so far, we’ve narrowed down our options considerably – from the entire greater Phoenix area, to the perimeter of Tempe Town Lake. Now, let’s take a look at google street view at a point near the edge of the lake to see if we can find a spot that resembles the one where our photo was taken, paying close attention to the details we see in the photo.
Red arrows and circles indicate additional landmarks that appear to match our photograph, such as the red-colored highway and street sign, powerlines, and the distant hill.
We’re almost there! Though we’re not at the exact spot where our photograph was taken, we’ve identified many of the distinguishing features visible in the picture. Let’s try another angle of this side of the lake to see if we can get a better match.
This screenshot shows a location close to where our “Penis Man” photograph was taken.
We did it! Though it’s not a precise match – and there are no portable toilets in sight – this location very closely matches the original photo.
Here’s another version of the photo, much more zoomed in: 